The link between iron intake as well as body iron stores and coronary heart disease (CHD) has been contentiously debated, and the epidemiologic evidence is inconsistent. We aimed to quantitatively summarize the literature on the association between dietary iron intake/body iron stores and CHD risk by conducting a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. PubMed was used to find studies publi...

The objective of the study was to evaluate the diagnostic efficiency of laboratory tests, including serum transferrin receptor (TfR) measurements, in the diagnosis of iron depletion. The patient population consisted of 129 consecutive anemic patients at the University Hospital of Turku who were given a bone marrow examination. Of these patients, 48 had iron deficiency anemia (IDA), 64 anemia of...

The mechanisms that regulate iron absorption l)y the gastrointestinal tract are not known. Clinical and experimental work suggests that decreased iron stores (1-3) or increased rate of erythropoiesis (2, 4) may be factors causing increased absorption of iron from the gut. The purpose of this paper is to describe the role of the hepatic iron stores as a stimulus to intestinal absorption of iron....

An increase in the frequency of blood donation among the donor population is liable to result in excessive iron loss and development of iron deficiency anemia. In the majority of blood banks, hemoglobin and/or hematocrit measurements are used as screening tests for the ability to donate blood even though iron stores may be depleted in donors with hemoglobin values above the arbitrarily defi...

Mammalian nonheme iron absorption requires reduction of dietary iron for uptake by the divalent metal ion transport system in the intestine. This was thought to be mediated by duodenal cytochrome b (Cybrd1), a ferric reductase enzyme resident on the luminal surface of intestinal absorptive cells. To test its importance in vivo, we inactivated the murine Cybrd1 gene and assessed tissue iron stor...

Hemochromatosis is a common genetic disorder in which iron may progressively accumulate in the liver, heart, and other organs. The primary goal of therapy is iron depletion to normalize body iron stores and to prevent or decrease organ dysfunction. The primary therapy to normalize iron stores is phlebotomy. In this opinion article, we discuss the indications for and monitoring of phlebotomy the...

D of iron homeostasis, resulting in iron deficiency or overload, are very common worldwide (1). Normal iron homeostasis depends on a close link between dietary iron absorption and body iron needs (2). The paper by Nicolas et al. in this issue of PNAS (3) presents the exciting possibility that a central player in the communication of body iron stores to the intestinal absorptive cells may have b...

Hemochromatosis is a common genetic disorder in which iron may progressively accumulate in the liver, heart, and other organs. The primary goal of therapy is iron depletion to normalize body iron stores and to prevent or decrease organ dysfunction. The primary therapy to normalize iron stores is phlebotomy. In this opinion article, we discuss the indications for and monitoring of phlebotomy the...

Iron transport in the reticuloendothelial (RE) system plays a central role in iron metabolism, but its regulation has not been characterized physiologically in vivo in humans. In particular, why serum iron is elevated and RE cells are much less iron-loaded than parenchymal cells in idiopathic hemochromatosis is not known. The processing of erythrocyte iron by the RE system was studied after int...